As anyone who has ever attempted to lose weight knows, very often it’s a roller-coaster ride without any of the thrills. You diet, you lose. You stop, you gain.

Fortunately, losing the weight is not all that difficult now that physician-supervised weight loss programs are so available. These programs succeed because of strict monitoring by a physician in combination with prescribed appetite suppressants such as phendimetrazine and phentermine that really do work.

However, keeping the weight off after the program ends is not so easy until you begin to use an often-neglected weapon for permanent weight loss.

The secret weapon to keeping your weight down after your diet program ends is your mind. This article will show you how to use your mind to control your weight.

If you expect to achieve long lasting healthy results for your body, you must first propose the idea to your mind and convince it to go along. If you’re like most people, your mind will be in only half-hearted  agreement with such lofty plans for your body. It knows you better than you know yourself … it knows you are basically an over-eating, under-exercising procrastinator who gives up easily. It knows that because that’s what you’ve been saying to yourself for years.

All real change in your physical body is the result of the thoughts and convictions of your mind. Unless your mind is fully enveloped in whatever plan you have for your body, success is unlikely. So how do you entice your mind into creating a mindset for long-term weight loss?

Whether you have already reached your ideal weight, or are still in the process of pursuing it, if you want long-term success, use your mind to establish some new habits.  Establishing a new habit usually involves doing something that you do not like doing or are too lazy to do.  But once the new habit is established, you have overcome your subconscious resistance, your mind is trained to obey you, and you gain inner strength and power.

Let’s look at the four elements necessary to create a new habit: declaring your intention, creating a plan, developing self discipline, and practicing.   

Declare Your Intention
Begin by setting a specific “intention” in your mind, as in, “I intend to stay at my current healthy weight for the next 6 months” or “I intend to be 20 pounds lighter by Christmas.” That seems quite simple. Stating an intention creates a visualization of what you want to achieve. A specific intention also establishes a time frame which is much stronger than the non-committal statement “I need to lose some weight.” Therefore, the first part of getting your mind set on the goals you want for your body is stating your clear, specific intention. The mind hears you, is interested, and really would like to believe you. 

Create Your Plan
So push on to the next step: create your plan. Plans should be simple. Here are some simple plans that, if executed, will make a difference in your body and help change your mind for the better.

• I plan to buy fruits for snacking instead of buying (name your junk food pleasure here)
• I plan to read food labels when I shop and buy high fiber, high protein foods
• I plan to work out at the gym every Monday and Thursday at 7 a.m.
• I plan to walk for 25 minutes every evening after work

All these simple ideas are do-able, but beware … the first time you do any of them, your mind may fight you and you’ll have to listen to some very enticing mind chatter luring you to just forget about it. As soon as you start hearing “what’s the use,” or “why now start tomorrow?” this is the moment when you must carry out your plan if you ever expect to have your mind start believing in you. Congratulate yourself after your walk is finished, or the fruits are purchased. Your mind will take note, become more interested and start to take you seriously.

Develop Self-Discipline
Maintaining the mind’s interest and converting that interest to conviction is the next phase. We all know that minds tend to wander. But there is one quality that will reign in a wandering mind very effectively. It’s called self-discipline and if you want to achieve any goal, self-discipline is required.

Just what is self-discipline, and more importantly, how do you develop it? Self-discipline is a code of conduct that you prescribe for yourself and follow under any circumstances towards achieving a particular goal. You make a pact with yourself to follow your plan no matter what. It’s the “no matter what” that separates the winners from the losers. You will be at the gym at 7 am, no matter what project needs finishing, no matter what the weather is doing, no matter how much you partied last night. You will be at the gym no matter how your mind tries to wander.

Self-discipline develops in baby steps. You don’t want to revamp your entire life, you just want to accomplish the goal of losing excess weight. But the awesome thing about self-discipline is that once it is developed in one area of your life, it readily splashes over into all areas of your life that you’d like to improve.

Practice, Practice, Practice
They say practice makes perfect and nowhere is this more true than in developing new habits.  Practice is fueled by sustained zeal and concentrated enthusiasm. On Monday morning, fake enthusiasm if you must as you head out to the gym in the pre-dawn hours. Tell yourself it’s just practice. If you treat every excursion to the gym as “practice,” your mind will soon stop interfering.   Practice shrinks resistance. With practice, whatever you’re doing eventually becomes a habit, a natural way of life. Once practice becomes a habit after a sustained period of time, then the desired outcome will spontaneously manifest as a natural result. There will no longer be the daily struggle of depending on appetite suppressants, or weight loss programs or the roller coaster ride of lose and gain. You will begin to move naturally and effortlessly towards your goals.

You now have control over your mind giving you the freedom to achieve any goals you set for yourself. You will discover that forming new habits can be delightfully habit-forming.